They’re Now Deep Faking Trump and Hillary

A couple weeks ago we talked about a new video editing program that can replace one person’s face with another person’s. One person had used the tech, called “Deep Faking” to place actress Scarlett Johansson’s face on a porn actresses body. This has opened up a whole, new, Black Mirror-level can of worms with Pornhub already announcing that they would not allow deep faked videos on their platforms.

“What’s the big deal?” you may ask. After all, a lot of people have trouble even conceiving of Hollywood celebrities as “real” people. Well, what if a malicious person used deep fake to put YOUR face on a porn star body? Some guys out there may be thinking, “Awesome!!” But, what if they put your face in a video where your partner is a sheep? What if someone did it using your mother or daughter’s face?

The quality of this technique is only going to get better and it’s already pretty damned convincing now. A few more ethical questions on the horizon: will people be black-mailed using deep fake? Will people now have a convenient excuse when they’re caught doing something shameful? “That wasn’t me with that underage intern! That video’s obviously been deep faked!”

A deep fake user named “derpfake” has taken the face-swapping technology to a new, non-porn level. He (or she) has swapped the real Donald Trump’s face with Alec Baldwin doing his Trump impersonation on Saturday Night Live.

And, “derpfake” also swapped Hillary’s face with Kate McKinnon’s.

So, are these videos so convincing that they’ll fool everyone? Surely not. But, will they get even more realistic over time?

Do you walk around today carrying more computing technology in your pocket than NASA had altogether when they first sent men to the moon? Yep.